The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology. Note, nothing described or referenced in this document is admitted as prior art to this application unless explicitly so stated.
In communicating packets, it is often desirable to maintain the order within a flow of packets. One way of maintaining the order within sequences of packets is to use ordered locks, also referred to as “flow locks.” Flow locks may be particularly useful in a packet switching device for maintaining requisite packet orderings when distributing packets to be processed to different packet processing engines.